Gangs, manufacturing, and economic distortions

Why is Latin America the most nerd-obsessed region on Earth? Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into surprising statistics showing that Brazil and Mexico out-nerd even Japan when it comes to anime consumption, video games, conventions, and more.

From Dragon Ball Z funerals in Mexico to Crunchyroll’s Spanish dubs dominating viewership, Latin America has been anime-crazy since the 1970s. We explore why anime exploded there (uncensored dubs, telenovela-style storytelling, cheap imports), debunk common theories (like Japanese immigration), and explain the cultural factors that made LatAm the global capital of nerd culture.

We also discuss how this shared “nerd frontier” culture makes Latin American immigrants far more culturally compatible with the US than many realize — closer than historical Irish or Italian waves — and touch on broader immigration, Catholic history, and even cowboy linguistics.

This is a fun, data-packed episode for anime fans, gamers, and anyone interested in culture, demographics, and immigration.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today.

America is dealing with a serious problem, a flood of immigrants from Latin America. And if you know anything about Latin Americans, you know exactly what type of people they are.

Speaker 8: what they like, standard nerds.

Malcolm Collins: But no, in, in reality. If you are unfamiliar with this phenomenon, Latin America is shockingly nerdy, shockingly nerdy.

We’ll just, well, I can start with a parade that they held in service. This was in Mexico to a character in Dragon Ball Z dying.

Simone Collins: Or, oh, don’t forget that. Like in the protests that are taking place right now, there there are one police peace flags flying. Yeah, well,

Malcolm Collins: they’ve been doing that in a lot of countries.

Here’s a. Showing of dragon ballsy outside in, in, in, in Latin America. To give you an example of how big they are,

[00:01:00]

Malcolm Collins: but if we’re talking about specific statistics, did you know that in Brazil when you ask people the percentage of internet users who enjoy anime, the number the percent in Brazil is higher than the percent in Japan.

That is how nerdy they are. So to go over the, and we’re gonna go over why this is after we go over all the statistics. But to go over the statistics here in Brazil it’s between 42 to 45%. In recent estimates in Mexico, it’s 41 to 44%. In Japan it is 38 to 42%, so less than Mexico or Brazil. Wow. In compared to the us.

So keep in mind, in Mexico and Brazil, you’re looking at like 41 to 42 to like 45%. In the US it’s 15 to 21%.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.

Malcolm Collins: So when I see them, like [00:02:00] nerdier and, and we’re gonna go over other nerdy hobbies too, because they are nerdier across the spectrum really. I mean, like demonstrably, nerdier, like

Simone Collins: DD nerdy, like not just, not we, they’re they’re way nerd to

Malcolm Collins: video games than people in the United States or Europe as well.

Oh wow. Okay. I know this isn’t just United States, this is basically all other countries, including Japan, they’re nerdier than in the uk. Anime is is 15 to 21%. Right? And this is from the pair consumer data.

Simone Collins: Wow, that’s so low.

Malcolm Collins: If you look at watch time weekly of anime, right? Like how much, oh, oh, by the way, if you’re wondering like crunchy roll data.

Yeah. Actually, we’ll get to that in a second.

Simone Collins: Okay,

Malcolm Collins: watch Time Weekly, Brazil, Mexico 35 to 40%. This is aligned with streaming surveys. This is anime watch time. Weekly of, of like, what they’re watching is anime. Yeah. That’s 40%, so it’s a little below Japan. And in Mexico it’s 36%. In Europe it’s 20 to 25%.

And then if you look at. Percent choosing anime is their favorite genre. [00:03:00] Latam has the highest rate anywhere globally. 2018. Nice guys. Japan is 17% us, Canada, 16%. And then ema, including the UK is, is 12%. Huh. And if you look at apac, like a, A, whatever you’re looking at 17%. Okay, so, crunchy roll, crunchy roll, viewership by language.

Spanish dubs make up 40% of viewing on the platform.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: English dubs are only 30 to 40%, so more people watch anime on crunchy roll in Spanish than in English.

Simone Collins: Collectively, and Crunchy Roll is a US Incorporated entity right. So I think we applied to jobs there once and it was like, it was in Austin or Texas, I think.

Malcolm Collins: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. If you look at Japanese exports of anime products, 40 to 50% go Latin American. Wow. . Okay. [00:04:00] So let’s, let’s now be like, okay. You can be like, it’s just watching anime, right? Like, it’s not actually like nerd culture.

Okay.

Simone Collins: Okay. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: so in Brazil they have like an anime pop culture convention

that it pulls in. It’s called CCXP, that pulls in 280,000 to 297,000 people.

It’s like a city. That’s huge. Oh my god.

It’s literally twice the size of Comic-Con, which is 135,000 people. And then if you’re looking at the, the largest anime only convention in the United States, right?

Yeah. That’s Anime Expo, which is a hundred thousand to 115,000. Is that

Simone Collins: the Wait, is that the San Jose one?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the one that we used. That’s the biggest one. No, that’s in Los Angeles.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: But if you contrast that with anime friends in Brazil, that brings in 80 to a hundred thousand. So about the same.

And then if you, [00:05:00] so what I’m pointing out here is off the chart. Off the charts in terms of anime consumption. And you can say, okay, well what about this video game thing you mentioned here? Alright. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you look at total player count in Latin America, you have a total player count of 372.3 million people.

Contrast that was North America, which is only 224.8 million people. Huh. If you look at. So that means the lifetime has around 67% more players in the United States, despite a smaller population. Yeah. And because this United States, you’re looking at 249 million.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Wow. What is going on?

Malcolm Collins: Hey if you look at let’s see.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. I have some theories.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, also much higher. What is it? A eSports viewership. Mm-hmm. Okay. So then I decided, I was like, okay, let’s try to go to other things. Let’s go to like furries and stuff like that. Are they also more in the furries? This was the only one where they do not [00:06:00] appear to be more into things. You see higher rates.

So before I go further and there’s some common explanations that I don’t really buy. And we, we’ll go deep on one of these common explanations I don’t fully buy, and then we’ll get into what I actually think caused it. Okay.

The common explanation that I don’t normally buy, that won’t go deeper on, but just so you’re aware.

As people say, well, Latin America was a highly sort of diverse marketplace where you didn’t have a lot of local content production. And so when they were buying children’s shows they disproportionately bought the rights to anime shows over United States shows. And that led to this really high rate of anime watcher ship across Latin America.

And I’m like. Okay. But if that was true, then why don’t we see a similar phenomenon across Southern Europe? Why don’t we see a similar phenomenon in Eastern Europe? Why don’t we see a similar phenomenon in Africa? Mm-hmm. Right? Like why all of them presumably could have gotten [00:07:00] anime cheaper too. So why is it specific to Latin America?

And note here, it’s not a Catholic thing. You, you do not see any of these phenomenons mirrored in Southern Europe, where actually anime consumption is lower than Northern Europe. Another country that really surprised me is the largest manga in the world is France, so another Catholic majority country there.

So, huh.

And, and also hopefully this makes, I think a lot of people like trolled the Vatican for when the Vatican created that anime girl as like their mascot. Oh yeah. And cute. And a lot of, she was

Simone Collins: adorable.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s really cute.

I wish they went all in with that. Like V

Simone Collins: 20%

Malcolm Collins: Vatican comes to town, a little Vatican you know, castle Girls everywhere.

Yes.

To clarify here, just because we think the Vatican did one base thing, and I think this was definitely base, does not mean that I do not think that they are an institution that is.

Not.

Diabolically Evil. , Recently with the Maduro thing, they decided to stand Maduro be like, [00:08:00] oh, we’re concerned about the United States, you know, with Maduro never complaining about, you know, the people being tortured under Maduro.

Right. When people don’t understand what we mean when we say the Vatican is the number one like enemy of like good in the world, in the United States and our geopolitical interests, just look at their reaction to Maduro, right? And I wanted to do today’s episode on Maduro, but Simone doesn’t record on weekends, so you guys are gonna get that tomorrow.

I was telling Simone, it’s so funny how much I like our Catholic fans and it’s a bit like, you know, you meet somebody who’s like a henchman for Hydra and they’re like, and they’re like really chill and you’re like hanging out with them and then you’re like, but.

Why, why, why do you, why do you hunch for Hydra Man? , And they’re like, oh yeah. I mean, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t agree with everything. You know, the people at the top are all about, and I’m like, but then why? , And they’re like, no, no, no, no, no. You don’t understand. Every large corporation has some corruption at the top.

I mean, the red skull, he is just, he’s a, he’s a whack, he’s silly, you know, he does his own [00:09:00] thing. I’m just a, you know, a typical henchman. I, I believe in the organization.

Speaker 23: Quit

Malcolm Collins: no, I thought she was great. But you’ve gotta keep in mind the context. When you’re looking at Catholic majority countries, like France being the number one consumer of Manga or Latin America being these fanatical consumers of anime it, it might change your mind in terms of how normal these things are in the mindset of a lot of these countries.

So, Simone, you said you had theory. What’s your theory?

Simone Collins: Japanese immigrants in Brazil, Peru, et cetera, like I, I didn’t expect that until we moved there, but then they were like, [00:10:00] oh yeah, no, we just have a ton of JA Japanese immigrants there. And here we are eating Japanese fusion food, Nikkei all the time.

And I just hadn’t realized that there was such a big, that Japanese immigrant contingent. So,

Malcolm Collins: Brazil had a quote unquote large Japanese immigrant population. If you’re looking at raw numbers. Yeah. But if you look at it against the population that existed was in Peru, Uhhuh, it’s completely ins, I mean, Brazil, it’s completely insignificant.

The only country was meaningful immigration when contrasted with the existing population was Peru. But, and I’m pretty sure about this, the Chinese immigrant population was larger than the Japanese one. That that was the dominant immigrant population in Peru.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: I’m just gonna check really quickly,

Simone Collins: still influential, and I think if, if you were to look at the immigrant population of Japanese immigrants in Brazil and Peru versus the.

Percentage of the population that is [00:11:00] Japanese immigrants in the United States.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I was right. Chinese immigrants are much larger in Peru.

Simone Collins: I would still guess that there is a higher percentage of Japanese immigrants in Brazil and Peru than in the United States.

Malcolm Collins: I’m gonna bet you’re wrong, really. So lemme pull this up.

Okay. So, percent of Peru descendant.

Japanese immigrant.

Okay, so it’s 0.1 to 0.3% of Perus population.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Percent of USA

0.5. So not that different

Simone Collins: in the US It’s zero point. Yeah. Yeah. It’s

Malcolm Collins: right in the middle there. So 0.1 to 0.3% in Peru and the US is 0.5. So it’s, it’s higher in the United States.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. Well then my theory is debunked, huh? Wow.

Malcolm Collins: [00:12:00] So we’ll go into the standard theory first. Okay. And then we can go into my theories.

Okay. Okay. So, in the 1960s and 1970s when Japan animation was introduced as an affordable alternative to Western cartoons due to budget constraints in local TV production.

Networks like Mexico’s television and tv, Azteca, as well as channels in Brazil and Argentina, imported anime series, because licensing rates were significantly cheaper than American productions. Mm-hmm. I mean, and Zach Milo, then president of Televisa, famously brought. Japanese cartoons in the 1970s is the most cost effective option for filling airtime.

Early hits included speed Racer known as Rio in Spanish, Astroboy and Princess Night, which aired was out heavy censorship. Unlike in the US where violence, blood, and romantic elements were often edited out. Oh no. What I will note here and I think is important to note about anime’s explosion in Latin America.

Anime exploded in Latin America from the very, [00:13:00] very beginning of anime.

Simone Collins: Mm, yeah. Speed racers way back in the day.

Malcolm Collins: Speed racer Astroboy. Princess Night. Princess Night. By the way, the largest collector of it is in Peru of like memorabilia for it. Like we’re. Seventies era anime. Yeah. Wow. Like, like, it didn’t get popular with like dragon ballsy or something like that.

Right.

Simone Collins: Which is still considered ancient. I mean, you know how we, how old we felt. Not that this is anime, but when. Someone staying with us was talking about this really old animated film that she watched called Kung Fu Panda, and we were like devastated.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. She’s like, yeah, there’s this really old anime I watched that I

Simone Collins: watched when I was really little.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, the 1980s marked a boom with series like Saints Saia dubbed Los Corio de Zelda, um uh, or Raman one and two, which became cultural staples. These shows were dubbed into neutral Spanish, or Portuguese, was opening and ending songs, [00:14:00] often translated and performed by local artists. For instance, Saint SGIs Sea was covered by bands like Vase and remains iconic decades later.

In fact it was done by like a, a winner to like a huge acclaim in Peru on, on, on their major like, you know, stars singing show where like you go and you audition. That was there like. Big moment. You know, like you have one of those moments where like somebody goes up, I can’t remember the one that happened in the UK where there was like ugly fat lady who goes up and sings and everybody loves her.

There was somebody going up and singing from an old anime.

[00:15:00] The 1990s brought explosive growth who was Dragon Ball, which turned heard across the region and inspired generations. A success in latam even influenced its revival in the US after initial flops. There other series like Sailor Moon in Yasha and Naruto followed with minimal changes.

EEG character names adjusted for pronunciation. A key factor in enemies enduring appeal. And this is, I do think an important thing here. So I, I’ll go over the two things that I think were really big. One I have actually mentioned in my readout of explanations here, but you may not have caught it or realized how different it makes Latin America than everywhere else that tried to air anime as cheap alternatives.

Do you know what it was?

Simone Collins: I mentioned just low cost, right? I mean, like the thing that stood out to me in the things you mentioned was low cost.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but it should have been about equally low cost anywhere. It was airing like Southern Europe,

Simone Collins: but Southern [00:16:00] Europe had some like great og like illustrated cartoons and stuff for kids, as did the United States.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they, they did have some, because you had like asterisk and like, okay. So exactly the, the core thing that was different about the way anime was rolled out during that period in the United States, in Southern Europe, in Eastern Europe and in Latin America was twofold. Okay. The first actually does have to do, its cause Latin America is not actually a fragmented market.

It looks like a fragmented market, but pretty much everyone there speaks one of two languages. Spanish or Portuguese. Okay. And that means that the mates could be dubbed centrally in Mexico

and just

across the region at a cheaper price than you could, for example, dub into all of so Southern Europeans.

Okay. Mixed languages or Eastern Europeans mixed languages. That makes sense. And I think this was all by far more important is. They didn’t censor it at all. Every other market that [00:17:00] anime was dubbed into did heavy censorship from the very beginning,

Simone Collins: and they made it suck more basically. Like it was better because it wasn’t censored and they weren caught on more.

They took

Malcolm Collins: death. They took out sex, they took out, you know, and that was always a big part of anime when compared. And, and so keep in mind you’re a young kid in one of these countries, right? And you can watch American cartoons of that ear period, or you can watch anime, right? Mm-hmm. And so you’re comparing it to something like GI Joe, and you know, people actually bleed when they get punched in this one.

Yeah. Die. Or people actually. Like you’re, is it, I remember as a kid how important something being a little edgy was to me.

And

if I had those two things, and keep in mind from their perspective, these two things are undifferentiated because they are both dubbed into their language. Right? So I’ve got these two things.

One just seems a neutered and boring in comparison to the other, right? Yeah. And also you don’t have them really [00:18:00] molesting with fts. So fun animation, destroyed anime in the United States. An shoulda contracted with fun animation. Huge mistake. Next, which was really important to it becoming as big as it did was its similarities to telenovelas.

In terms of

the

story

structure.

So in the United States if you’ve watched like Dragon Ball Z. And you were a kid, it can be a shocking experience to you because every single effing episode ends with a cliff finger in a way that American cartoons just don’t. Right? Yeah. They’re, they’re really

Simone Collins: a lot more self-contained.

That’s a great point. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But if you watch to the end of like a Dragon Ball Z episode. It’s a bunch of drama in a fight, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Maybe, maybe Dun was like balls or something and then like talking to each other and they’re like, whoa. You know? But. That in, in structure really [00:19:00] is not that different from the way a telenovela often plays out.

Simone Collins: That’s very interesting.

Malcolm Collins: The center of the conflict being two characters talking at each other about their emotions which is not, or, or like you killed X person who was my half sister. But actually we were. Lovers. Yeah. And, and that is very similar to the way anime plays out. Yeah. And then every episode ending was like a,

oh no.

Can you imagine

the, the, the, the cliffhanger here? And that just was not as jarring to Latin American audiences as it was to American audiences, and it culturally fit what they were already used to from the native types of storytelling. And so if anything, the American style storytelling felt much weirder or more boring, right?

So, Simone, I another thing I wanted to talk about on this,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because we, like our primary friend groups are Latin America, and we work at a [00:20:00] company, like the companies that we run are all based in Latin America.

We used to live in Peru. I’ve lived in Mexico and Brazil and Costa Rica. So a lot of Latin American countries. And I, I always. I feel like when I go back, it’s so funny because like my core like world outside of this podcast is Latin American. And yet I go to my like reunion at like the GSV and it feels like because they hear about us being like quote unquote great replacement theories or whatever, and it’s like that scene

Speaker: Good, good. I hear you are a racist

Speaker 4: now, father, what? What? How did you get interested in that type of thing? Said, I’m a racist. Everyone’s saying it, father. Should we all be racist now? What’s the official line the church has taken on this? Oh, no.

Only the farm takes up most of the day and at night. I just like a cup of tea. I might be able to devote myself full time to the old racism.

Malcolm Collins: And. [00:21:00] I’m like, no, no, that’s not me. It’s, it’s the reports have been grossly exaggerated. And then the other part of our fan base is like this lady

Speaker 4: Good for you, father. What? Oh, Mrs. Re.

Speaker 5: Good for you father, but someone hasn’t got to stand up to the coming over here. Taking our jobs and our women and acting like they own.

Speaker 6: F*****g

Mexicans.

Speaker 6: . It isn’t the ,

Mexicans.

Speaker 6: It’s the

Catholics more broadly.

. He’s after. I’m not after the .

Catholics

, they invented gayness.

Malcolm Collins: And, and we’re like, we have to be like, no, I, I think they, they, they may have exaggerated our positions on a few things in that latest piece.

But anyway. The, the, what I wanted to get to was something I mentioned in another episode where I said that Latin America was culturally closer to the US than especially Mexico. I said, is culturally closer to the US than many other regions.

Yeah.

And so like, do you wanna do a full episode on this?

And I’m like, Hmm. I don’t really wanna do a full episode on [00:22:00] it, but I can go get a bit deeper into it here. And this is something that like, unless you actually know a lot of Latin Americans, I would not say that you have a lot of opinions on. Because a lot of people who I know who say that this is not true either have not lived outside the US a lot in different regions or they just don’t know a lot of Latin.

Because the things that they cite as being indicative of like the reasons Latin Americans are incompatible with America. Are the same stuff that every Catholic immigrant population has done in America ever. You know, if, if you’re talking about the crime wave, well, so did the Irish and the Italians, you know, the, the mafia in the mob, right?

Organized crime was really big in those two countries. We have an episode on why it’s so common in Catholic majority country immigrant populations. If, if, if you’re talking about them refusing to integrate for a period you know, I, I’d actually argue that the Latin American immigrants have integrated.

Significantly faster, like maybe twice or three times as fast as either the Irish or the Italian immigrant waves did. Yeah.

Simone Collins: [00:23:00] That’s, I think that’s fair.

Malcolm Collins: And, and so I, I just don’t think that’s, that’s particularly fair. If you look at their countries already, their countries very similar to the United States are countries of immigrants.

IIE you know, did they, they came from Europe often. Conquered native populations they are slightly more integrated with those populations in the United States. Mm-hmm. Although the extent to which they’re integrated with those populations, I think is hugely overstated so that they can be treated as bipoc.

If, if you if you, and again, my pop my perspective on this is always going to be a little. Biased because I am a seventh generation Texan. And that means that, you know, my family was there before Texas State. And so that means for people who are from Texas you, you grow up in a country that is already a Latin American version of the United States.

So again, that also makes it seem not as distant. So, so like from my perspective, and I’m just con comparing them ‘cause people were asking me about this they seem [00:24:00] more cohesive. With a sort of American values and tradition, then the Italian or Irish immigrant waves were

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: descendants of some of those waves are.

This isn’t to say that like I, I would kick them out, but, but one of the questions is why are they, and I think that part of it’s with nerdy culture it’s a nerdy frontier culture.

Simone Collins: Where do frontier culture? I don’t, do you consider it a frontier culture? I don’t know.

If you wanna see a spectacular movie about this period of Latin American history, watch the Mask of Zoro.

Speaker 11: They want to destroy America. Give me the courage strength to wear the mask a little longer, . the world isn’t big enough to hide from me.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. It is a frontier culture.

If you, if you there’s a great thing that went through all these words that we think of as cowboy words.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. That are like super, super Spanish words. I

Malcolm Collins: know. For example, [00:25:00] or there were a

Simone Collins: ton. Yeah. On, on Star Codex 10, he did like a summary of all of them. Found it, so, Buckaroo is Vaquero, cahoots is cohorts. Vamos is Vao or Vamos. Whose G is Hu viles is Vic, or sorry, Vic T is Lata. Kimbe. Ismo. Sabe. He, who knows the, the one who knows most Tanto is, is dummy.

Mosey is, is probably also from Vamos, like Va vamo, you know? Yeah. Tarnation was probably just a way to avoid saying damnation,

So I decided to look up a clip of Yosemite Sam, just to point this out to people, and the very first clip I found both has him either saying that most of Yosemite Sam is taking place in Mexico, or that he is from Mexico because he points out as being from the other side of the Rio Grande and uses the [00:26:00] term ombre to refer to other people.

For people who don’t know, that’s Spanish.

Speaker 13: Yeah. Yosemite. Sam. The roughest. Toughest Heman. Toughest ombre has ever crossed a Rio Grande

Simone Collins: posse Latin, verbal Infiniti equals to be able to or have power. Boondocks is Bundock, which is Tagalog, so not Spanish, but means mountains. Honcho is actually Japanese.

Turns out group leader El legato, the lizard became alligator over time. Savvy is sabe like nos like I know, like it’s a conjugation of no in, in Spanish. Like he knows. They know. So yeah, just tons there. Some of them are, are French too, but. The, the vast majority here

Malcolm Collins: are. So the point being is that when you think of the old west, when you think of the cowboy archetype about [00:27:00] 50% of the cowboy archetype was Mexicans.

Yeah. Mexico. Yeah. This is not to say that this wasn’t a blended culture with the United States or that you know, and I don’t ascribe to like the US stole Mexican land or anything like that. It’s actually much more complicated than that. And there’s a longer video I can make on that if people are interested in

Yeah.

But

the, the wider point here being is, that across Latin America, you’re dealing with a culture where the core difference between them and American culture, like, I’m like, where are they culturally different from us? Pretty much everything that makes them culturally different comes from one of two things.

Slightly higher native population to start. Mm-hmm. And a higher cath. And, and that they’re Catholic well in a,

Simone Collins: in a different language, Spanish or Portuguese.

Malcolm Collins: You. Yeah. But that makes them significantly closer to us than any European immigrant group.

Mm-hmm. Whether

that’s Irish or German. Really the only European immigrant group that I guess you could [00:28:00] argue is culturally compatible with the us would be.

English because you know, at that point you could at least say, well, they’re the same language. So even though they’re not from a country that was made up of immigrant waves they, they came from the seed culture of that country. Maybe you could say that about Germans as well, because they were about 50% of like early American immigrants in, in a lot of regions.

Yeah. But outside of that, if you’re talking about, again, Italian, French. Irish Spanish polish immigrant waves. They’re significantly more culturally distinct from the United States than really any immigrant waves that’s coming from Latin America. I’m not saying this to say indiscriminate Latin American immigration is a good thing.

I have long said, I do not think it’s a good thing. I’m just saying that, we also need to be realistic about it, especially when we consider our blessing, when contrasted with immigrant waves that are heading into Europe which are very culturally distinct from them. Yeah. And second, I think not understanding the [00:29:00] similarities of the Latin American immigrant wave into the United States can lead us to making mistakes and act like.

Deporting or dealing with immigrant populations from regions that are not Latin America should take equal priority to the Latin American immigrant waves. Which is where you get these, you know, giant you know, Caribbean, for example, immigrant waves into the United States, which are much more culturally distinct from the United States than the Latin American immigrant waves or immigrant waves from, you know, refugee populations in like the Middle East.

And people are like, oh, this is the same as like Latin American immigrants. And it’s like, no, it’s not the same as Latin American immigrants. And so, if we’re gonna begin to recognize again that different populations are actually different and that it is useful for us to understand this when we are talking about immigrant waves and thinking about, as I’ve always said, the way I see diversity is that it, like you never want diversity for its own sake.

But you also [00:30:00] probably don’t want just the normal. You’re, you’re probably better with like ingredients on a dish with a few complimentary ingredients. A dish doesn’t get better just because you’ve added more ingredients, right? You know, some ingredients just don’t go with other ingredients. And in a a, a culture where you know, it is normal to marry off your daughters at nine, maybe doesn’t go as a culture where sleeping with a 9-year-old is illegal, right?

Like these two things might be culturally incompatible. And. That however, is is is not really the case with Latin America. You don’t, you don’t. In the United States you know, when you get problems with like immigrant rapists in the United States, it’s, it’s literally be because these people are criminals where they came from and they’re criminals here.

And the reason why they’re able to get away with their crimes is because the Democrats are so pussy footed around actually dealing with criminals if they happen to be immigrants. Which is bad. And, and you do need stricter. And I, and I believe this history, you [00:31:00] do need much stricter policing in any region where you have a high proportion of Catholic immigrants because they’re just more predisposed to criminality.

that’s gonna be clipped out. But if you look at the early Irish waves, if you look at the early Italian waves, how was the crime sprees that came out of those waves dealt with? They were dealt with an increased in. Sort of a police state within those regions. And if you look at the period after you have those initial immigrant waves, places like New York became something of a police state.

So I think that, that we need to be realistic about why you can’t just take any population in whatever you want it wishy-washy, you know? Anyway. Your thoughts, Simone, on the whole Latin American nerd thing, or Latin America’s cultural proximity to the United States. I can’t hear you by the way.

Simone Collins: I know I muted myself ‘cause he, it’s

Malcolm Collins: okay if he’s crying.

You can still talk.

Simone Collins: I, I like it. I, I, I think it’s a sign of, of, of greater [00:32:00] compatibility. Plus also I feel like the more nerdy collective is the, the more I, I’m comfortable trusting them and, and integrating them into society. ‘cause obviously we have a very nerd friendly bias here. So I’m all for it.

I love it. And I, if I don’t, I don’t know, even if it isn’t a sign of similarity, I would say it’s a sign of of favorability.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I think that this also really applies with when we were talking about all of the Spanish words that are actually we associate with the Old West. When we talk about potentially integrating a country like Mexico.

Because we mentioned this in another podcast with the revolts that are happening in Mexico right now. And it would help us a lot in terms of immigrant waves because if you could put the border at the south of Mexico, it would actually be defensible.

Like that’s an actually defensible short choke point.

If you put the border where we have it now. It’s like literally comical to attempt to defend it. Like we, we try, [00:33:00] but

Simone Collins: there’s no way, there’s no way you,

Malcolm Collins: you can’t do it. Like it’s, it’s, it’s going to be incredibly porous as it is right now. But the reason why Mexico is uniquely cogent with US cultural history is because it’s literally when you’re talking about the history of the old West, if you’re thinking about people in.

The cowboy hats. With the cowboy boots being a cowboy, that lifestyle was practiced from the United States, well into the region we call Mexico today.

That that is a,

Simone Collins: not even just, it was just flat out in the region that was Mexico and eventually the United States took it and No, no, no, no. But

Malcolm Collins: I’m talking about still into the parts that are Mexico today.

Simone Collins: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: It’s not like it was just the parts that became United States. It was. A a culturally like the west was a culturally uniting thing, and the core difference between the two cultural groups was one was Protestant and one was Catholic.

Mm-hmm.

And yeah, I mean, people know my thoughts on that.

But I, I sort of feel like [00:34:00] the cat’s out of the bag already in the United States was, was Catholic immigrant groups. So if, if we’re not going to oppose that, then I don’t see the reason to oppose Mexican integration.

Simone Collins: I like it. I like that you’ve, you’ve. Turned your episode on Latin American weaves into a, and this is why we should integrate with Mexico State 51st State Mexico, 51st State.

Let’s go.

Malcolm Collins: I’m by the way, their fertility rate is already below ours for people who don’t know. Well, and I also

Simone Collins: feel like right now, like at least Gen Z in Mexico is ready. They’re they’re ready.

Malcolm Collins: And I, yeah, and I would say for people, they’re like culturally nothing like the United States. I’d point out they’re beating us in obesity right now.

Okay.

Simone Collins: They’re more American than Americans.

Malcolm Collins: They’re beating us in obesity. Yeah, man. We were

Simone Collins: like, we’re, we’re number one. We’re number one. And now we’re not anymore. We have to integrate them to, to regain our status. To regain

Malcolm Collins: our status in obesity. Yeah. Anyway,

Simone Collins: we can do, [00:35:00]

Malcolm Collins: do it. Simone. Again, I’m not actually pushing for, for integration in Mexico.

I, I, I think it, it’s probably not worth it. It would just cost too much.

Simone Collins: I just think right now Mexico’s way too much of a security liability. I, I don’t, I don’t think that the gangs are as easy to take out as a lot of people think they are. Yeah. I think that, I mean, this is a, it’s a distributed gorilla insurgency.

You, you don’t just take that out easily. Even though we have amazing military might, they’re very, very difficult to take out.

Malcolm Collins: No war dealing with the, the, the Mexican gangs would one. Because they threaten politicians so frequently. You basically need to remove democracy from the region for a period.

Yeah.

And two, the war to deal Izzy’s game would look like what’s happening in Gaza right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and also like Mexico is a huge country. Just like to to, to fully put them down would be much harder than it would be in Gaza. Gaza’s, a concentrated. Very small. You could just go geographic region.

Malcolm Collins: Mexico is supposed be very mountainous country. [00:36:00] Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: in Mexico, like there’s a lot of places to hide. I don’t, I mean, it’s, I, I don’t know how I would deal with it. So it’s a very tough situation.

Malcolm Collins: There’s also a benefit to having Mexico on our border that a lot of people don’t think about. Which is doing manufacturing in Mexico is artificially cheap because of the gangs.

Really? Yeah. So if you were to set up these days, because it’s gotten so expensive in China, it is cheaper on a, on a per labor cost to set up a factory in Mexico than it is in China for ‘cause of

Simone Collins: the gangs.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So Mexico should have. Experienced the same phenomenon China did. I mean, they’ve got NAFTA to their advantage.

They’re right next to it. It should be cheaper. Oh, to

Simone Collins: become more expensive. But because of the gangs, it’s artificially, wages

Malcolm Collins: should have gone up in Mexico. It should have industrialized, but it hasn’t been able to because of the gangs.

Simone Collins: That makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: Which again, is common historically in most Catholic majority countries. I mean. If you look at the gangs, it basically [00:37:00] ruled either Ireland or Italy for periods. It was really horrible.

Simone Collins: Mm. Yeah. Well, at least stay of anime. I’ll give at least stay of

Malcolm Collins: anime. All right. Love you to death, Simon.

Simone Collins: I’m gonna join the other room in four minutes. I just need to change his diaper and give.

Malcolm Collins: So the episode today, my, my conspiracy theory on that,

Simone Collins: people largely agree with you, but I now theorize that there’s this au schizo spectrum when it comes to these things where if you are more autistic, you’re more likely to assume that this is just people being incompetent. And just no one really doing their jobs.

And if you’re more on the schizo spectrum, you assume that it’s a bunch of people.

Malcolm Collins: She’s calling her husband a schizo, by the way, people here. Yes,

Simone Collins: I am.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I’m gonna need to beat you after this. We gotta schedule that because the beating cannot go on air and call your [00:38:00] husband a schizo. Well, I completely agree with you.

I, I’m definitely the schizo here and you’re definitely the artist here. And I think that that’s why the, the podcast works. Yeah. Oh God. Because, you know, people act like we think very similarly, but I don’t think that we do, to be honest. No,

Simone Collins: I don’t think they, I don’t think they think that, I don’t think they think we think super similarly, but yeah, people, people are loving, loving your theory.

I, he’s pooping, that’s why.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I was really disappointed that Tucker with this one so bad.

Sorry, this was filmed a while ago, so you’re not sure what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Tucker Carlson complaining about Epstein, , something, something, something real.

Malcolm Collins: There was one part of it where he like specifically. Like, it was like almost embarrassingly stupid. Which where he had to bring up the, the phone was cracked by a technology invented by a Israeli company.

Oh gosh. Yeah. Gives the screen that look like you know, what’s up. And it’s the. [00:39:00] They didn’t still control it when the, you know, the FBI was using it, you know, oh my God. Tucker’s brain is so cooked. We did lose for the first time podcast subscriber, like paid subscribers for the, for the episode where we suggested cutting off aid to Israel as a pass to reduce antisemitism.

But you know. What you gonna do?

Simone Collins: Screw us. What I mean, I, I, I get it. And, and people are entitled to pay for what they wanna hear, so I respect that. But thanks to everyone who does support us, it makes a huge difference. We really appreciate it.

Speaker 25: Dang it.

Speaker 26: Where did you hear that? I said, dang it. Who says, dang it? Titan does. Titan does. Yeah. Where did you hear that word? On the chair. [00:40:00] On the chairs? Yeah, on the tv. And yeah. From Stacey and John. Yeah, from Aaliyah. Yeah. Well, which one? Stacey and John and Aaliyah and Stacey and John. Does mommy say Dang it? Yeah.

Speaker 27: No, no. Mommy, you don’t. I don’t, no, no. I say worse words when I’m angry. It’s true. What? What do I say when I’m angry? Titan, you cry. I cry. Yeah. Oh, what do you say when you’re angry? Titan? I cry too. Oh, okay. Well, I want you to be happy, Titan. [00:41:00] Yeah. Because it’s, it’s really important to me that you become a happy shark princess.

Speaker 25: Yeah, but who knows? Creaky man. Creaky man? Yeah. Who’s creaky? Man? Nobody’s AK man. Oh, then I guess nobody knows Creaky man. Yeah. Yeah. But where this creaky my wolf. Well, if there is no creaky man, I guess he doesn’t live anywhere, but, but where does the creaking, my wolf, the creaky man? Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know about a creaky man.

Speaker 27: Maybe there is one, but I don’t know him. Do you know the creaky man? Yeah. Tell me about him.

Speaker 25: I think Creekmore loves in a cave. In a cave. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it [00:42:00] loves in a cave and that’s so spook in the cave. Mm, that definitely makes sense. The Creekmore loves in the cave. He do lives in a cave. Yeah, it’s a giant cave. A giant cave. Yeah. Does the cave have a refrigerator in it? No.

It the, the giant cave has nothing in it. Only creaky man. Yeah. It has a C creek man. And that’s a pink cave. A pink cave. Yeah. Well, my two favorite colors a pink and purple. Is it a fabulous cave? Yeah. Yeah. Pink and purple. The came, well, I, so it’s a pink cave and it’s fabulous. Creaky man lives in it. It does not have a refrigerator.

Yeah. Aside from creaky, man, there’s nothing else in the cave. Is there [00:43:00] anything else in the cave That’s pink and purple? Yeah. What? What else is in the cave? There might be pink and purple and blue in there. What? What in there is pink and purple and blue furniture. Does he have a couch? Does he have a bed?

Yeah. Does he have a dog? No. I Does he have dinner? I think so. What does he eat? He eats. He eats carrots and dinosaur nuggets. And ketchup. Really? Who else eats carrots and dinosaur nuggets and ketchup. We do. Oh, is creaky man us? No, he is not. Oh, okay. I was just checking the creaky man. Just a something. Oh, a cave.

Speaker 27: A cave. A pink. A pink cave. Yeah. Pink and purple and some blue. [00:44:00] Yeah, there’s some blue on your face. Did you know that? Yeah. I think you drew on your face with your pens.

I love you, Titan. I love you, mommy. Dad, can I have a, when you finish your dinosaur nugget, okay. My dinosaur, yeah.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe